Error message when trying to transfer a repo: "You can only transfer a repository from an organization to yourself at this time"

[nboliver-ventureweb]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

Body

I am an owner in the organization and an admin on the repo, with direct access.
I am trying to transfer the repo to a user, but am encountering this error message:

You can only transfer a repository from an organization to yourself at this time

From the documentation, I seems like I have all the required permissions to transfer the repo.
Why is this occurring? Should I transfer the repo to myself and then try transferring to the other user?

[KaranAnchan]

Yep, transferring to your account would work, but if you do not want to transfer the repo to yourself, you can check the organisation's member privileges, there should be a menu with 'Repository deletion and transfer', select the option 'Allow members to delete or transfer'. Now it should work, just check n see

[ensondev]

Ese mensaje suele aparecer aunque tengas permisos de propietario y administrador, porque GitHub actualmente limita algunas transferencias directas desde organizaciones hacia cuentas de otros usuarios por motivos de seguridad. Una solución es transferir primero el repositorio desde la organización hacia tu cuenta personal y una vez que el repositorio esté en tu cuenta, volver a transferirlo al usuario destino.
Pero también revisa que el usuario destino no tenga restricciones para recibir repositorios.

[onurdilmen]

Yes — transferring to yourself first and then on to the other user is the workaround, and it's the right call here.

The error message is misleading. What it really means in this case is "this target user can't currently be the recipient of an organization-to-user transfer from this org", not that you can only transfer to yourself in general. It hits in a few situations:

• The target user has reached their account's free private repo / total repo quota (most common cause if the repo is private).
• The target user has a name collision: they already have a repo with the same name, or had one before that was deleted recently.
• The target user has 2FA enforcement set up in a way that conflicts with the org's 2FA settings.
• The target user has never logged in / is a brand-new account.

A few things to check before doing the two-step transfer:

1. Ask the target user to confirm they can create a new repo with the exact same name in their personal namespace. If that fails, the underlying reason will surface in clearer text (quota, name conflict, etc.).
2. If the repo is private and they're on a free plan, make sure it isn't a paid-only feature blocker — large file storage, Codespaces config, etc.
3. Make sure the target user's email is verified and they've completed any pending 2FA setup.

If all that checks out and you still get the same error, the org → user → user route works reliably:

1. Repo → Settings → Danger Zone → Transfer ownership → transfer to your user account.
2. Accept the transfer in your account (you'll get a confirmation email / banner).
3. From your account's repo → Settings → Transfer ownership → transfer to the target user.
4. They accept on their side.

Side effects to be aware of:

• Issue numbers, PR numbers, stars, watchers, forks all carry over.
• Webhooks survive. Deploy keys survive. Repo secrets survive.
• GitHub Actions billing flips to whichever account owns the repo at the time of run — worth coordinating if the target user is on a different plan.
• Any redirects from the original org/repo URL continue to work via GitHub's automatic redirect, but once you transfer a second time (org → you → target user), only the latest redirect is preserved. If you have existing webhooks or CI configs pointing at org/repo, they'll follow the redirect, but for cleanliness update them after the second hop.